Husband and Wife, Ages 92 and 93, Die in Apparent Murder-Suicide at Elderly Care Facility By Bailey Richards

An Arizona married couple in their 90s are dead after an apparent murder-suicide.

In the early hours of Thursday, Oct. 16, police responded to an elderly group home and care facility in Mesa, Ariz., following a report of two residents “who had been shot and were not breathing,” the Mesa Police Department said in a news release obtained by PEOPLE. CBS affiliate KPHO was first to report the news.

Staff at the facility — which police said is located in the 1000 block of W. Mendoza Avenue, but did not name — told police that a male resident, later identified as 92-year-old Jerome Woolums, had possibly shot himself. 

When officers arrived at the group home just after 4 a.m. local time, they discovered Jerome and his wife, 93-year-old Katharine Woolums, in a bedroom together with gunshot wounds to the head, according to police.

Jerome, who “was found with a possible self-inflicted gunshot wound,” was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. He was also found holding a gun.

Meanwhile, when officers found Katharine, she had a pulse, so first responders with Mesa Fire and Medical attempted life-saving efforts and transported her to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said. The nonagenarian later died at the hospital.

The Woolums had been “married for many years and were living at the care facility to receive medical care,” investigators later learned, according to the Mesa Police Department.

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The department described the fatal incident as “an apparent murder-suicide,” stating in a news release that “at this stage of the investigation, evidence indicates Jerome shot his wife, Katharine, before taking his own life.”

It is “early in the investigation,” police said, noting on Oct. 18 that the case remains open, pending medical examination results.

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